Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Kelly - you made me smile... that made me very happy...
  

    
Kelly - loved your story about the sanctuary. I haven't known any
raptors personally, but I'm very fond of the parrots who share the
lives of various friends.

Pam - yay for not being forgotten. Even if I only get to go to DW
symbolically :).

Ninave - I plan on doing my PhD in Plant molecular biology and
physiology. This is the general area I'm working in at the moment, and
I enjoy it a lot. Getting a doctorate will mean that I get to do a lot
more of my own thing, and choose my own projects rather than working on
other people's though. *Sigh*. Just got the letter from the funding
body though. "Your application has been unsuccessful in this annual
funding round". Bummer. Standard rejection letter, I'm sure so many
people here have had similar ones. Oh well, next application.

Jen - SoM. I'm afraid I have to disagree. Captain von Trapp isn't
scary, just scarily repressed. Which is fun too though <grin>
  

    
Jo: Geez, another Jo biologist.  I wonder if there are any others
lurking around here.  Good luck with funding (I know how that goes.)
On the other hand, I'm really happy I don't have a PhD right now
because it means I don't have to give any of the presentations
tomorrow.

johanna, who's going to go make loud noises with her new amp.  yay!
  

    
Is anyone else getting prompted for a password when they try to access
www.neilgaiman.com?  Or does it just hate me?
  

    
johanna: nope, not just you.

kelly: woo! Mary, Debbie and Chris (of Debbie and Chris fame) went
shopping last month for trinkets and thingmabobs out on the
Niles/Skokie border, and saw a raptor (we couldn't tell if it was a
hawk or a falcon) flying around the Jewel parking lot. It was a big old
bird, and we just wtached it for about 10 minutes. The crows and
ravens were going psychotic, trying to chase it away. It was way, way
nifty. Tho I suppose if I lived in Niles and it had eaten my (imaginary
on account of sneezing) cat, I'd be less thrilled. But hey, own a
kitten, fear the hawks. Isn't that a motto somewhere? Central Florida,
maybe... Land of lost small pets....

I like ravens. There were two enormous ravens on a neighbour's lawn
this morning on my walk to work, and I made myself late just watching
them for a few. Chicago is chock full of 'em, but I hadn't seen any
quite so close up in a while. Way bright and shiny.

Mike: I'm 20 pages into "Last Hot Time". The hard-boiled detective
fiction fan in me is adoring it, as is the urban fantasy fan in me, tho
the Chicago native in me is wigging... :) But all 3 are pretty darned
hooked.
  

    
It hates you, Joanna. Yes, you, personally. 
It knows where you post.
Of course, that doesn't mean that it doesn't hate the rest of us as
well.

(I emailed who I hope is the webmistress about it.)
  

    
Hey, I know why they haven't fixed NeilGaiman.com yet;
The raptors ate all the mice!

(Hee-hee.)
  

    
Hey, waitaminnit! Dan Guy, did you say that Goyer did the adaptation of
"Murder Mysteries"? Goyer that used to be <dsgoyer> on the WELL?

Elise,
trying to remember if she already knew that and forgot, and if so, how many
times.
  

    
umm neilgaiman.com didn't seem to hate me this morning when I visited,
but it could be pretending.
  

    
Kelly - thanks for the wonderful descriptions of the various hawks and
owls...sometimes in the summer, I hear an owl hoot distantly, or I see
an eagle or a hawk float on the air currents and am reminded how much
I adore them....almost as much as I like turkeys.:P  (Well, actually I
like them more, but I couldn't resist....)

Elise - Event?  I ask because every time I think of event, I think of
the SCA.  Not a member, but I've been to a few events.

Jo - sorry.  :(  But I think it sounds like a wonderful thing you're
doing <said with envy, for I know I could never get my brain around
aspects of what you're doing, but I still find it fascinating.>
  

    
So, anyway, I was reading this book by Jan Burke (Not mentioning the
title to decrease the spoiler factor inherent in this post...)  and it
got me to thinking about some things about writing...

Well the first thing, and it's silly but I just want to share it
before I throw on the rant switch - is that she has this blood hound
that everyone calls Bool, which I didn't think anything of until later
someone calls him by his whole name.  Boolean.  Isn't that the coolest
name for a search and rescue dog?  I had one of those delighted moments
where I wish I'd thought of that.

Then I was reading some passages where , and I realized what things we
reveal about ourselves when we write (and I mean anything from letters
to War and Peace.)  Now I've known this for ages, really I have.  But,
a while back I was reading different bits of criticism, and one bit,
oh, it frosted me - said that when mystery writers wrote certain scenes
of torture or assault, they were going for the purient interest of the
reader, that they were actually getting a kick out of it.  I was
terribly disgusted by this thought, but I couldn't think of an educated
way of saying, "No, you're wrong."  Now years later, I'm all curled up
and reading this book when it gels (ok, I'm slow, I know this...) that
when we write these horrible things it's because we're showing our
real fears in an attempt to make the reader afraid, too.  Maybe even
doing some exorcism.

But I can't help but wonder what I reveal, when I write...what do you
know of me, now?  I'd hate to have a good psychologist go over my short
stories, all of which seem to have a theme of some sort of cage
running through them...<shudder>

And do we up the ante, every time we try and write something more
originally horrific?  Make everyone used to horror at this level so
that the real monsters have to do even more horrible things to get our
attention?

Actually, I don't take it as seriously as all that.  I just had some
odd random thoughts and I wondered what other people would think...  

I wonder if this post is too dark for this topic.  I'd rather have
silliness any time.  Forgive?

Ninave
  

    
Ninave, no! I'm so hungry for something a little, well, forgive the
pun, meatier. 

I don't write much horror because I don't want to feed myself, or
others, off of my pain. Horror as a genre is, to me, redundant. Perhaps
I should say, *for* me it is redundant. The inside of my head, the
memories and whatnot, often follow the Fellini Circus into Twin Peaks
for the Midnight Show. Sometimes they're just that scared,
why-am-I-here person sitting between the two chair-throwers on
Springer. So I unintentionally write things that are very "gentle", as
you so kindly said, or "a bit sweet" as someone else said; that's the
way my fantasy world is, if I have one. Sometimes even I want to retch
from the cuteness.

Then there's the other, the Sweet Dark Nothing, the fear and violence
and angry cold hopelessness.
I'm not sure whether writing with that part would feed it, or cure it.

And I share your fear of upping the ante.
  

    
<lioness> - The stripey stockings should be easy enough to find (Hot
Topic even has them). As for the Lite Brite quote, you can blame my
friend James for that. He's good to blame for a lot of silly things
like that. At work, he drew up a convoluted comic panel of the
"Adventures of Lil' Satan (featuring a guest appearance by Florence
Henderson) - Next episode: It's a Very Brady Afterlife"... or something
like that. One of these days he'll get off his butt and start posting
here. Maybe if I talk more smack about him, he will. :)

Any bay area WELL peeps - The Cartoon Art Museum has re-opened.
Current gallery is Edward Gorey (yay!). The Grand Re-opening to do is
on Friday evening. I'm thinking of popping by there after work (as it's
only a couple of blocks away). It's a small place, but it's really
neat. http://www.cartoonart.org/ for more info. Hopefully I'll see some
of you there.

Kelly - Ramble all you want about the birdies. I do the same with the
mice when I've the mind to. Actually, bits of what you said (pig,
escape artist, loyal) reminded me of the various squeakers. And of
course the bite too.

JaNell - Not *all* the mice. (looks over at the one who is eating the
cage bars for breakfast)

ninave - I'll have to get back to you when I have consciousness with
which to think about it more. In the mean time, while we are all very
silly here, I think we can handle dark. Tho' I fear that at some point
it's likely to turn into some dark sort of silly. Not that there's
anything wrong with dark silly. 

squeaks, who will stop now and not post any more until she's had more
sleep!
  

    
Kelly - your stories from the bird sanctuary brought a tear to my eye.
 Sometimes, I have the worst Dr. Doolittle complex - I'll try and
start a conversation with just about any furry/feathered/non-human
thing that comes along.

Which segues into..............

Started the moving process today, and have (once again) come to the
conclusion that I have far, far, far too many books.  Seriously, a lot
of the first Taurus-station-wagon-load was books that never got
unpacked from the last move, or were swapped for others at some point
in the last 20 months.  The second load is nothing but books - tried to
get smaller boxes, but still failed to get enough, so there are a few
that are much too heavy - how I got them down the 17 steps and into the
car, I'll never know.  Right now, there is a car outside groaning
under the weight of *most* of my books - this is ridiculous.  Have no
idea what to get rid of, of course.........

Honestly, felt a bit depressed this evening, driving back to the old
place from the new.  Leslie (my ex-wife-to-be - always feel a bit like
Jeff Goldblum in "Jurassic Park" at times like this) and I had
discussed the fact that, no matter where we moved to next, it would be
a step down from this apartment, and it's a bit odd to be facing that
so suddenly.  In spite of the fact that there are a lot of unhappy
memories of the time I've spent living here, the apartment and the area
around it are lovely, and I'll miss the birds at my feeder and having
the woods right outside my door.  In spite of the fact that there's
nothing else to do within 45 minutes of here, with the right person,
this would be an absolutely perfect place to live - a bit expensive,
but a really wonderful sort of "modern country" living.

Leslie is in D.C. right now on business, and when she returns on
Thursday, I'll be moved out.  While that's something a part of me
certainly looks forward to (since it's the only way forward that I can
see), the sadness still hangs in the air here.

Just when this night threatens to get really maudlin, my cat Pandora
does the cutest thing - she's exploring all the newly-empty shelf
space, in a way that only a four-year-old, overgrown kitten can.  I
wish the new place was a bit bigger, to give her more room to get her
crazies out, but she certainly won't miss the dog that was added to the
mix here 2 weeks ago.  Glad she's coming with me.

Okay, that's it for me tonight...........      
  

    
I don't know that Neilgaiman.com hates me, exactly, but it just asked
me for a password like I haven't visited it every day since April or
so.  You'd think it would recognize a regular.  Ah, well.  I'll just go
over its head.
Hi, Neil.  Good raptor story.
Kelly- I loved that the owl that lost his wing capacity was trying to
fly everyday.  And that the other owl always did it even though she was
wobbly.  How... metaphorical, I guess is the word I want to use.
Ninave-
I was watching an interview with George Harrison late last week (may
he rest in peace.  I was never a Beatles fan, but, well, I
empathize)and he said that the one way he was going to let the public
know him was through his work.  Which is true, in its way.
I just don't know how to comment one way or the other, though.  One
story I wrote came out sounding *extremely* biographical and really,
besides the main character's being named Will and being a writer,
wasn't at all.  Couldn't have been farther from me personally.
On the other hand, there's a lot of me in everything I write.  Every
story, every character.  I think that's how it always is, though.  I
mean, how can you care if you don't identify with something?  And why
would you write, if you didn't care?
On genre (using horror as a segue); I've never really believed in it. 
I guess because I grew up reading Stephen King and Dean Koontz, who,
apparently blended it, or stretched it.  I've just never really thought
of any story in terms of horror or science-fiction or fantasy or
mystery.  More just good or bad.
And in terms of horror;  my last short story was deeply disturbing,
and twisted, but I wouldn't call it horror.  There wasn't any monster.
  

    
I'm curious as to how one knows that what one has written is horror.

If Neil and Mike come by and add their answers to the pile, I'd be a happy
beast, I would I would.

(Actually, I'm a happy beast anyway, because I am taking a break from the
Dire Paper-Whomping Task and going upstairs to the workbench to Commit Art
with the incredibly sparkly Swarovski crystal cubes I got today. Wheeeee!)
  

    
    How does one know it's horror?  As Master Sean O Lochlainn said of
black magic, it's a matter of symbolism and intent.
    That is, you're setting out to scare the reader.  There are a lot
of kinds of scare, of course, from a slow feeling of unease (which is a
marvelous effect, but like most marvelous effects, not at all easy) to
a very visceral reaction.  Combinations are possible, and there's
certainly room for humor -- properly used, it can greatly enhance the
nastier effects -- but if the effect is mainly/entirely comic ("Abbott
and Costello Meet Nixon") I'd call it a comic story using the props of
horror, but without their usual intent.  Spookiness would be
acceptable, but the audience knows nothing -really- bad is going to
happen, and will fairly enough be upset if it does.
      That point gets stretched in something like Stuart Gordon's
movies ("Re-Animator," etc.) which are spectacularly grisly but
entirely played for laughs -- gross-out humor, though not without
intelligence.

     To segue: spent a fine evening, thanks to Neil and Company,
listening to Stephen Sondheim speak at the Guthrie.  In a discussion of
Sweeney Todd and Hal Prince, he commented that Prince is only
interested in musicals with "social content," and didn't want to do
Sweeney until he decided it was about Victorian social conditions. 
Sondheim:  "I just wanted to scare people."
  

    
And for todays totally random question:

Did you see the life sized Lite Brite at Burning Man, squeaks? :-)
-Kelly
  

    
Thanks, lioness.

John- You're great. I don't know you, and, am ashamed to say that I
haven't yet read any of your work. But I enjoy your posts. Just thought
I'd say so. 

Lenny- Thanks! So...
I figured out the keyboard thing. I took it apart and discovered an
abundance of cat fur. I shouldn't have been surprised. As soon as I
cleaned it out and put it back together, Nija (the cat who sheds the
most) plopped down on it, thinking that she was going to take a nap.
Who knows how long that was going on. Sometimes when writing I'll leave
the room to go to the bathroom or something only to come back and find
qwo34quo3q24qoiuweorywoara across the screen. I have a hunch that they
have a lot to say to the world. If only they knew our language....
Printer still doesn't work though. Computer itself is still weird. My
dad is visiting this weekend and says he'll try to bring Windows 2000.
Microsoft wanted me to pay them for a disk that supposedly gets rid of
all the Windows '98 bugs. Shyeah right. I refuse to give that company
any more money. Especially since they're the ones who made the mistakes
in the first place. They should fix them for free!
Anyway, squeaks has the best advice. I'll just try to pretend I don't
care. And life will go on somehow...
It's really sad about George Harrison. First, he was almost stabbed to
death. Now this. I'm young but I grew up on the Beatles. That's almost
all my mom ever played. Beatles and Todd Rundgren. George was always
my favorite because...I guess because he was the most mysterious and
serious. I always wondered what was going on in his head.
Mysterious=sexy to me. Which, thinking about it now, would explain why
my first boyfriend looked a lot like George. 
  I was reading the recent official Tool newsletter (which, oddly, has
nothing to do with Tool) and the guy said something about how the
world seems to have gotten a lot more screwed up since Red Bull hit the
market. I think I agree with him.
  

    
mary -- that was a lovely appreciation of George.


Johanna -- that's not a yes or no question. I know stuff about it, and
I know the shape of what occurred. But if I were to write that story
I'd learn an awful lot about what happened and who the people were.
Most of where the magic happens is in the details, not the broad
strokes.


Kelly -- that was a beautiful post. And I understood it, after my
afternoon at the raptor centre, in a way I wouldn't have done if I'd
read it without meeting the barred owls and the
blind-in-one-eye-from-hitting-a-power-line golden eagle and so on...

Jo -- I always thought Captain Von Trapp was scary. Actually, as a
child being taken to Sound of Music, I figured he had probably killed
the first wife.

Ninave -- I've only ever written two horror stories (sandmans 6 and
14) and in both cases they went where they went because that was where
the story went.

I figure that horror is one of the tools at a writer's disposal. It's
a very effective one, as a reader knows at a gut level if it's working
or not (something horror shares with humour and pornography). As a
reader I know if it's horror: I'm scared, or creeped out. As a writer
I'm behind the scenes, but it's not a good place to be for the length
of time one has to write a story. (That's why I've never written a
Horror Novel. No desire to live in that place for 8 months.)
  

    
Neil--cool post on the journal.. I'm a total raptor freak.  I'm
fascinated by them.

Kelly--great story!  Barred owls are wonderful.  I tried
(unsuccessfully) to raise a pair of babies whose nest tree had been cut
down.  It broke my heart.  I wish there had been someone who knew
something about raptors that I could have given them to, but in the
South they are considered The Enemy.

Mike--50 points to you for being the first person to reference Randall
Garrett.  I love those books!  I'm also loving Final Reflection, and
Tara may not get her copy of "From the End of the Twentieth Century"
back.  Can't wait to start LHT.

And thank you, Rocky, Michelle and Elise. 

And what Tara, Debbie, Chris & I were shopping for when we saw the
hawk was silliness & noisemakers  for a certain person's birthday,
seeing as he was spending it away from home and all.  When Chris heard
we were going shopping for party supplies, he asked his mom, Debbie, "
Whose birthday is it?"  She said, "Neil's".  He said, "Ooooohhh.  I
thought it was a normal person's".  She asked, "Neil isn't normal?"  To
which he replied, "No, he's bigger".  

So there you have it. Neil is bigger than normal.  :-)

Rick--I hate that feeling.  You know you have to go but the regret all
piles up on you one last time.  Hope it's better soon!

Mary (up too late *again*)

Oooo, Neil slipped.  Um, thanks. <blushes profusely and runs away to
bed>
  

    
I didn't mean to sound like I thought we were silly as in frivolous, I
meant that...we generally try and keep an air of cheer and pleasantry;
we speak of sorrowful things, true, we write lovely eulogies and tell
of the terrible things that happen to us.  these are necessary things;
and when they are spoken of we comfort each other and lend sympathy.  I
think we're (and it's so neat to say we instead of you!) are pretty
cool that way, especially since it's sincere.  My post was not
necessary, a kind of dark bummery post written by someone who was in a
dark bummery mood.  I saw it as a blotchy spot on the general good mood
of the group.

Rick - It's not easy, and I feel really bad for you.  My marriage was
over, in my mind, when I moved out and I couldn't wait, but still I
couldn't eat and spent most of the time being depressed, and reading my
favorite books over and over.  And talking....of course, I have no
idea how other people handle this, but I talk and talk like a mad, wind
up chatter box.  On a practical note:  Next time, or even this time if
you can, go to your local grocery store....most of them have paper
bags, get a raft of them.  Double bagged, there's nothing better for
paperbacks, especially, though outsized books will fit too.  But mostly
I love em for paperbacks.

Will, and everyone, really...  That's true!  You do put yourself into
every aspect, it's not only intentional, it's just the nature of the
job.  I don't consider myself a horror writer, and think what I said
can stretch into everything.   Right now I'm trying to put some very
gentle romance into a story so it makes sense when the two main
characters decide to stay together in the end, and I'm aware that I'm
writing things the ideal way I'd like them to be, not really the way
things are.  When I was going my divorce, I wrote this really long
essay about how when we write things like that, the ideal, instead of
the truth, we mislead everyone into thinking the ideal is possible when
it isn't...but I'm getting back to the point...everything we write is
so revealing in certain ways, don't you think?  But....now that I think
seriously on it, I don't feel like I know a great deal about Neil
because I've read Sandman or Smoke and Mirrors, in fact, then things I
knew from him I garnered from the back cover...so maybe I'm just
rehashing a pointless mess.  But thank you all, for going along with
it.  :D

Now I'm going to go do the <urk> ironing.

Ninave
  

    <scribbled by dfowlkes Tue 3 Jul 12 10:14>
  

    
Ninave~Stop with the apologizing, you're making me feel awful for
being interested in the discussion!

And as for knowing Neil from his books...
I don't know, maybe I would have a totally different take on him if
I'd read Sandman, or any of the hundreds of things I've not read yet.
There's layers, and layers. each showing a confusingly different
aspect, and who could ever know but him what's at the core? I guess
that some people write about themselves, and others write about
fragments of themselves, or aspects, or not at all, or all of the
above...
It's like that Sting song, where he says "you'd still know nothin'
'bout me."

But, I look at the missing parts: what's not mentioned, what's
avoided. In photos I prefer focusing on the shadows and reflections of
the object, rather than the object itself. The shadows and reflections
reveal how the object is interacting with other objects, the sun, time
and location; the interaction says much more than the object can say
alone.

When you write about cages, or something symbolic of your life, more
is said about you in the *use* of the symbol (how it is used, as well
as *that* it's used) than is said by the fact that you used "a cage".
How is the cage presented? What happens to the cage? How present is it:
always, or at key points in the story? What is it made of, or does
that vary? Maybe the cage is gold and in the end, Our Heroine
symbolically (or maybe literally) breaks out, busts it up, melts it
down in the fire she's made by rubbing her captor's bones together,
hocks the gold, and leaves on the next bus outta town, and Yeah! for
her. Maybe she grows, but is forced into the shape of the cage; maybe
she's put on display in a Geek Show. Maybe her bones grow into the cage
until she's not sure where the cage ends, and she begins, or, once
she's merged with the cage she unfolds her cagey self, stands up, and
walks away, free.

Anywho, I'm interested, and others seem to be, too. 
  

    

Mmmm.  Swarovski cubes.  <swooning>